Monthly Archives: July 2010

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“Gaby and Mando walking through the park, looking for love in protection of the dark

“Club Cobra, a temple in the night, the more I hear of Morrissey, the more I feel alright“

Those lyrics are from the Ozomatli song “Gay Vatos in Love” found on the group’s new CD, “Fire Away.” The track addresses politics, sexuality and Latino pop culture.

The song was influenced by the height of California’s Prop. 8 debate and while one of the Ozomatli members wrote music for an indie film project about a Mexican-American gay gangster, according to a La Plaza article.

“Gay Vatos in Love” also mentions Angie Zapata, the 18-year-old transgender woman in Colorado who was killed in 2008 by a sexual partner who learned she had male genitalia. Zapata’s killer was convicted last year of murder and a bias-motivated hate crime, according to published reports.

The song challenges comfort levels among some fans of the Los Angeles-based iconic fusion band, singer Raul Pacheco said in an interview with La Plaza.

“I think people get confused. They don’t know where we’re coming from. Some people ask, especially in the Spanish press, Who’s gay in the band? So there’s an assumption there,” he said.

But “For us, it’s a bigger issue,” Pacheco said. “We felt that (LGBT rights) is just another inn a long line of underdogs, so I think we connected to it on that level. It was totally natural for us to take that stance.”

Click here to read the full article, and click here to buy the song on the Ozomatli’s Website

Sonoma County has agreed to
pay $600,000 to settle a lawsuit by an elderly gay man who said social
workers kept him from seeing his dying partner in the hospital, according to an Associated Press article in the San Jose Mercury News.

Clay
Greene, 78, of Guerneville, filed a lawsuit earlier this year, claiming
the county’s Public Guardian program discriminated against him because
of his sexual orientation.

Greene accused social workers of
denying him hospital visitation rights to see his partner, Harold Scull,
despite signed wills, medical declarations and powers of attorney
naming each other as spouses. The couple was not married nor registered
as domestic partners, according to the article.

The lawsuit also alleged after
Scull’s death, social workers forced Greene into a nursing home and sold
the couple’s property, including art and heirlooms.

The
county’s lawyer, Gregory Spaulding, denied the discrimination claims
but admitted mistakes in selling the couple’s property, according to the article.

Over the decades, a handful of television shows (“The Brady Bunch,” “Bewitched,” “The Cosby Show,” “MASH,” “The Partridge Family,” among them) have found a lasting place in the heart of American culture. Thanks to the vision of Jeff Mullen, those beloved programs enjoy a second life as something else near and dear to America’s heart – X-rated movies, according to an article on the Website Brand X Daily.

X-rated versions of hit Hollywood films are nothing new — remember “Edward Penishands,” “Good Will Humping,” or “Raiders of the Lost Arse” — but Mullen (who writes, produces, directs, markets and composes soundtracks under the nom de porn Will Ryder for his company X-Play) has created his own niche within the classic TV genre. And the quality goes in before the name goes on, Mullen says in the article.

“The film parodies were generally a loose take on the subject. They never really took it past the title of the movie,” says Mullen, whose next release, “Not MASH XXX,” is due out August 10th. “They never went at it with the same artistic eye that we do. We really wanted to recreate the TV experience of the viewer, and that’s something porn hasn’t done before. Just because it’s porn, there’s no reason it should be substandard. It has to be Hollywood-good.”